@ [VENUE REDACTED], Glasgow, on Tue 24 May 2016

This could’ve been a review of Cate Le Bon at [VENUE REDACTED]. This could’ve been an (estimated) four star feather in her weird Welsh psych-rock cap. This could’ve been the source of many a pull-quote praising her “whimsical playfulness” and “idiosyncratic brilliance”.

But, it isn’t. It’s a review of the gaggle of incompetents tasked with organising admission to her gig. It has to be. I’ve pencilled out time to do a review, and that’s all I got to see tonight.

Because I was there, in Glasgow, at [VENUE REDACTED]. I’d travelled the hour plus from Leith to Glasgow at my own expense. I was even there in time to review the support act, who no doubt might have appreciated the publicity.

But “I’ve added you to the Glasgow guestlist” from a press officer obviously doesn’t mean what the actual words might lead you to think it means, since such guestlist as existed tonight at [VENUE REDACTED] didn’t have me on it. So, on with the show…

First up tonight were the Two Guys On The Door. The duo had certainly thought about their act, sitting behind a table as if to be able to permit ingress to a musical event. The positioning of the table was acceptable, just at the bottom of the staircase, and not too far from the door into the gig (although there was obvious potential for congestion on the stairs).

And yet almost from the off, the woefulness of their set-up was apparent. Biro-scrawled names on the back of a scrunched-up… what actually is that? a receipt, a menu?… do not scream competence. This two-piece had come into the gig hideously under-prepared. The uselessness of their “guest list” as reference material then became all too real when confronted with an actual e-mail from the artist’s actual press office, a press office neither appeared acquainted with. Rather than take this obvious balls-up by the… erm… balls, accept the mistake, and make arrangements to solve it, they then went for a cowardly buck pass. It’s a straight up zero stars for this pair.

Buck suitably passed to the Tour Manager Loitering By The Merch, hopes were high (OK, low to moderate) that the night could yet be rescued. The mood in the venue certainly pointed to her having the authority to do something sensible, like resolve the situation, but like the preceding act, her people skills were weak, and her view of the bigger picture non-existent. The record company had sent her too many requests this morning, which she hadn’t been able to cope with, and the gig was full, and she couldn’t do anything, even when confronted with an actual e-mail from the artist’s actual press office FROM LAST MONTH, by someone who was going to do an actual review of her charge’s performance, not some ligger on the make like most of the rest of the “scribbled on the back of a flyer” list presumably were. With a crisis management strategy that amounted to “it’s someone else’s fault”, it’s another zero stars.

Headline act The Press Officer from Bella Union was, of course, not at the gig, and thus can’t be reviewed, but in any case, all evidence points to her being the only person in the debacle who knows what she’s doing. She’s fixed tickets for us before, her e-mails are clear, she’s been persistent (as good press officers are) about getting a Cate Le Bon album review (now canned, obviously). Maybe she did forget to put in a request, but presumably, had she been there, she might have seen the benefit in allowing a reviewer who had travelled for an hour into the gig, rather than turning them away angrily back down the motorway with an hour of thinking time to compose their response.

Which means the real star of tonight’s festival of ineptitude is whoever at [VENUE REDACTED] is co-ordinating this piss-shower. Because this is the second time [VENUE REDACTED] have done this. Since we started reviewing gigs again in earnest, we’ve tried to do two gigs at [VENUE REDACTED], reserved places with press officers of good standing, and both times been turned away by staff who don’t have a full grasp on the situation, and can’t deal with documentary evidence that something has gone wrong at their end. Last time it was a new reviewer, and I tried to reassure her this doesn’t always happen. Apparently it does.

When is it good PR sense to turn away a journalist (even an unpaid one like me) who had a very reasonable expectation he was expected at the gig? Yes, you might be turning away a fly-by-night blogger. Or you might be turning away the shoulder be-chipped editor of a widely-read Scottish review site, whose last zero star review was the most read review on the site ever, who’d happily broadcast your incompetence for cheap thrills, slight satisfaction, extra readers and a memorable way of marking his 200th article for the site. You just don’t know. Better be on the safe side.

I’ve been that other side of the fence, and courtesy is what you do. When a reviewer from the now defunct Yorkshire music mag, Sandman, turned up unannounced at my gig some years back, he definitely wasn’t on the list, because there was none. I apologised anyway, invited him in and shouted him a pint. We got a quote from that gig we used on flyers for two years. Similar treatment by [VENUE REDACTED] (“here, take a seat upstairs, get a pint on us, and I’ll try and sort it out”) might have won them similar goodwill. Even if in the end there was no legal physical way of cramming any more humans into that room, they’d at least have shown willing.

My ego is long past caring what lists I am on. I get my kicks from reviewing and being a constructive part of Scotland’s cultural life, not from racking up freebies. They’re just a means to an end for someone of slender financial means. But I do care when that scene is littered with blank-faced numpties sat on skinny-jeaned arses, obstructing people who at their own expense of time and money are DOING THE VENUE’S PROMOTION FOR THEM, obstructing people who are actually trying to build something, not just in it for the reflected glory of being the lackey of a minor indie star. (In the interests of balance, there are press/PR/front of house folks at venues of much greater standing than [VENUE REDACTED] who are equally aggravatingly hopeless.)

If you’re a promoter, a tour manager, a booker, a PR in the music industry, or in the arts in general, and you have any whiff of a payment for it, that’s a cushy number. Sometimes, you will be literally organising a piss-up in a brewery. If you can’t do that, shift the hell over and let someone else have it. There are at least half-a-dozen job-hunting The Wee Reviewers who would do an infinitely better job than the half-arsed efforts on show at [VENUE REDACTED] tonight.

As for us, we are not short of reviews to do. We already do getting on for 1000 a year. There are at least a dozen music venues in Glasgow alone we could be reviewing at. If [VENUE REDACTED] don’t want free publicity, I’m happy to not give them that free publicity. I’m happy to redact their name for an entire article on the grounds that apparently there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

So it’s no stars for the guys on the door, no stars for the tour manager, and no stars for [VENUE REDACTED]…

As for Cate Le Bon? Fuck knows. Her album’s OK-ish. Not as good as her old stuff.